politics, theory, action

July 29, 2016

DNC: Hillary. Because balloons.

If I were Buzzfeed, I would write a list of the 27 things that most depress me about the HRC nomination. But I'm not Buzzfeed and I prefer anger to depression.

I'm disgusted by the manipulation of feminist goals to generate support for imperialism. This isn't new. The critique of liberal feminism has been well-known for decades. And yet its explicit suspension is disavowed by those who want us to all share in the excitement of breaking the glass ceiling. I don't share it. I feel nothing but rage. Thatcher was not a victory for women. Neither is Clinton.

I'm appalled by the falling into line of ostensibly progressive intellectuals who not only seem to have suspended all their critical capacities as they repeat the elements of the very politics they ostensibly reject -- unity, nationalism, demonization of dissent, paranoia -- but who ignore HRC's actual record as if the wars and coups she has furthered, the deaths for which she is responsible, do not matter.

I'm shocked that critical intellectuals parrot the worst elements of mainstream media and Clinton talking-points, failing to analyze the convention, its pageantry, and its speeches as an ideological production designed to create an appearance and a feeling. Somehow ideas of the partition of the perceptible have fallen away before fawning over attractive people, rhetorically well-constructed speeches, and balloon drops.

Well, actually, the balloon drop was really great. Endless. Abundant. Different sizes. And some had stars. I loved the balloon drop. I wish I was in there, too, surrounded by thousands and thousands of balloons. Maybe, like Bill, I could grab a big blue with stars and take it home. Or bounce the big red and white ones back into the crowds. And then confetti.